Chapter 133 [Episode 68] Team Rush 2

“Waow, is this the Sky-grade Ship? It’s really amazing.”

After Gye Baek was on the ship, he was impressed with everything.

“I told you in advance, but your main position is a catcher. You are in charge of the naval gun and the harpoon, so manage them well.”

“What is there to manage?”

“You must always check the charge level of the naval gun and the harpoon. If the gauge runs out in a critical moment, you have to make an emergency charge and you have to use ten times the Magic Stone as usual, so keep it filled in advance.”

Magic Stone was used to charge the gun and the harpoon, but the charging time was so long that they could suffer later if Gye Baek had not filled it beforehand.

[What should I do?]

Gye Baek had a clear role as a catcher, but Dark Knight had no such definite role. So Sang Hyuk looked around and found a job for him.

“Aspice is the deck captain. As you will see later, many enemies will come to our deck. At that time, you will handle them.”

The job was to deal with the creatures that parasitize the body of the Sky Whale, but as said before, even though the creatures were parasites, but they actually are the same kind of monsters that exist in Hagye.

To catch the Sky Whale, they had to deal with the parasites. It did not make sense to not kill the parasites while hunting the Sky Whale. So the role of the Deck Captain that is given to Dark Knight, was more important than he thought.

“Okay.. okay.. because you guys won’t understand everything when I explain it with words, let’s just go up for now. Let’s go up and you learn it by experiencing it, you will adapt soon.”

Sang Hyuk believed that because of Gye Baek and Dark Knight skills as players, they would adapt quickly.

Honestly, the things related to Sky-grade Ship were mostly things that Sang hyuk knew only as ‘theory’, so there were lots of things to learn while experiencing it for himself as well.

“Ah, and in case of Ilya, she basically just listen to my orders, but I’ve been asking her for active ‘cooperation’, so she should listen to you. Of course, don’t expect too much because it is really only to a certain extent.”

Only Sang Hyuk was able to command her because the basic condition of Ilya, who currently on the Sky-grade Ship, was ‘summoned’.

Immortal and Ilya, Gye Baek, Dark Knight.

Ink-Black Dragon, which carrying these four people, slowly ascended to the sky.

The Skyway, which opened through the Opening Sky Ceremony, is not visible on the ground, but it is seen clearly when you’ve reached above a certain height.

A clear trail visible between the clouds.

The trail was shining in purple, and it was absolutely possible to enter it from the Lower Third World.

“Watch it well. That’s the Gate of the Open Sky, the entrance to the Skyway.”

Even though Sang Hyuk did not shout it out, Gye Baek and Dark Knight were already focused and staring at the Gate of the Open Sky. It was haloed by a vivid purple aura and its appearance was quite spectacular.

“I explained it before, but once we pass through Skyway, we can not use return stones. Of course we can’t retrace our journey nor open the gate from the other side. The only way to get back to Hagye is by character death.”

Middle Layer, commonly called Sky-sea, prohibited all kinds of long range movement skills.

After passing the Middle Layer and reaching the Heavenly World, then the Return Stones and Recall Books can be used again.

In a word, the only way to go through the Middle Layer was by riding the Sky-grade Ship.

Even an individual’s recall from Hagye to Heavenly World was possible, but it was impossible to use Mass Teleport to bring someone else, or to open gates for others to use.

So, the Sky-sea was an area where every user had to go through once.

Kwagwagwagwagwa!

Sang Hyuk drove his Sky-grade Ship into the Gate. There was no reason to hesitate because all preparations were complete.

You are passing through ‘The Gate of Open Sky’ and entering the Skyway.

You entered the Middle Layer.

You are now the first user to enter the Middle Layer. As a reward, you receive a unique title, the ‘Sky-sea Explorer’.

You got the one-time event effect, ‘Sky-sea blessing’. This effect lasts for 160 days, but disappears when you die.

System notifications continue to come up, but now it was the time to concentrate on piloting the Sky-grade Ship.

The moment they passed the gate of the Open Sky and approached on Skyway, they felt something like pressure pushing the Ink-Black Dragon. Sang Hyuk endured the pressure silently and held the key tight.

Kwaaaa!

How many minutes have passed? The pressure finally disappeared and the vast Sky-sea spread out in front of them.

“Ooo!”

Gye Baek screamed at the dream-like landscape which unfolding in front of their eyes. Dark Knight also looked around with a surprised expression.

Sang Hyuk was not surprised because it was the landscape he had seen in his previous life.

“The blessing of the Sky-sea... This time I’ll use it 100%.”

In his previous life, Sang Hyuk had died in vain and lost this blessing without knowing what was in the Middle Layer.

The blessing of Sky-sea had this effect.

[Special Event Effects] The blessing of the Sky-sea – a small blessing given by the god of this world for you who walk the vast Sky-sea. I hope you will not lose your way.historical

[Effect] Acquired karma is tripled for 160 days.

[Uniqueness] It disappears when you die and you cannot get it again.

The effect itself was very simple.

However, the triple increasing of Karma was more powerful than any collection of effects.

The explanation was a little blessing, but it was actually a powerful blessing enough to turn over the rankings of many rankers.

Most of those who lost this blessing before 30 days in the previous life had their ranking fall hard.

On the contrary, those who have maintained this blessing for more than 120 days had their ranking rising up high.

Later, many users hunted very safely near the door of the Open Sky to keep this blessing.

Of course, in order to hunt properly, they had to go in more deeply inside, despite the increased probability for them to die, so there are a lot of people who thought that they should still hunt properly even if they receive some damage.

When they sail at normal speed, the Middle Layer was navigable in about 120 days. But, that was afterwards, after most of the routes were discovered and then the optimal route was discovered.

It took more time if the route was not clear.

In fact, the pure sailing time of the first Sky-grade Ship to arrive at the Heavenly World through the Gate of Open Sky in the previous life was 316 days.

This meant that in the future, the users would stay in Middle Layer for at least a year.

“It will take at least two months for users to create a Sky-grade Ship.... So, it will take almost a year and four months for Heavenly World to be revealed properly, right? If it was like that, then ... let’s aim to arrive at Heavenly World in half a year.”

In fact, there were more things that Sang Hyuk did not know about Middle Layer than the things he knew.

“Wow, the landscape is amazing. But, Sang Hyuk, how do you find the way?”

“The captain of Sky-grade Ship can set the sailing route. When we set it, an arrow will be shown as soon as I hold this key. Of course, this arrow is not perfect navigation. And this arrow only shows us where the destination is. If we go based on the arrow and drive the Sky-grade Ship properly, we can follow the sailing route.”

Sang Hyuk thoroughly answered the question. The reason for this is that Gye Baek or Dark Knight might need to hold the key when they are in an emergency.

“So, now we’re entering the sailing route?”

“Of course, If we drive the Sky-grade Ship and pass through the Gate of the Open Sky, the first sailing route is automatically inserted. The result now is that an arrow is clearly shown in front of me.”

“Then how do you enter the second sailing route when we arrive at the destination of the first sailing route? Is the second one also inserted automatically?”

“What kind of world do you think EL is, that keeps giving you things without working for it? Of course, it’s not automatic input. Basically, the sailing route can be obtained by resolving a mission called ‘sailing route quest’. For reference, all sailing route has dozens of them except the first sailing route. We have to go through at least more than 100 sailing routes from the Gate of the Open Sky to the Heavenly World, so I think that the number of cases will increase tremendously.”

“Wow.. You are amazing. But where do you really get this information? I feel amazed every time.”

“Hohoho, you are like that as always.... That is business’s secret. ”

Sang Hyuk smiled and answered casually. If he put a serious look here then the other person could think more seriously about it, so it was important to throw the answer playfully while turning the topic around.

“You know that you can not use Return Stones or Recall Books in Middle Layer? And we can not even log out anywhere we want.”

“Huh? What are you talking about? So logout cannot be done in the Sky-grade Ship?”

“Of course, logout can be done freely in Sky-grade Ship. But if all three of us are logged out at the same time, the Sky-grade Ship will be stopped in the middle of the Sky-sea... And that means, while it is drifting it can float anywhere or it could be completely destroyed by Sky Whale attack. Then at the time we log in we will die because we fall to the Sky-sea.”

“Then while three of us go back, one should be here to take care if the ship?”

“Normally, one should take care of the ship while the three go back, and we can contact each other offline if there is any emergency. And if we find a ‘safe area’, we can send it to my Spirit Virtual Space for a while, and all of us can rest at the same time.”

Ink-Black Dragon did not have to go back to the Spirit Virtual Space to restore its durability unless battle damage accumulates over and over again because of the effect of the title ‘The King of the Sky-sea’.

However, since the regular Sky-grade Ships must restore their durability periodically in their virtual space, so safe areas were very important places.

“How do we find a safe area?”

“There are two kinds of safe areas. Permanent safe areas and temporary safe areas. For reference, the arrival points we reach are permanent safe areas and the temporary safe areas can be created in various ways and the most typical method is Sky Whale Hunting.”

“So, when you hunt the Sky Whale, the temporary safe area will be created as a reward?”

“Not as reward.... The body of the Sky Whale does not disappear immediately after its death. Especially, the higher the grade, the longer the body remains, and the body of the Sky Whale could be used as a temporary safe area.”

“Ah.....”

Gye Baek who listened to all of Sang Hyuk’s words, looked as if he understood things that didn’t make sense until now.

“Now, that you have resolved all your curiosity, let’s focus. Although the first sailing route is a relatively safe sailing route but expect a lot of the Floating Insects Troops that are floating on the Sky-sea.”

The floating insect troop was a group of parasites floating on the Sky-sea.

The parasites floated like this in Sky-sea and when they encounter a Sky Whale, they will stick to it.. Of course, they were stuck to the Sky-grade Ship because they thought it was a Sky Whale.

Then the battle began immediately.

“So...should we speed up?”

Sang Hyuk stepped on the accelerator pedal below the key and pushed the Ink-Black Dragon’s throttle.

A while ago, the propulsion gauge was only up to about 40%, and Sang Hyuk increased it to 70% in an instant when he stepped on the accelerator pedal. Ink-Black Dragon was not only a High Speed Ship, but a Sky-grade Ship with a high speed, so the base speed itself was very fast.

Is that why? When Sang Hyuk pushed hard on the accelerator pedal, Gye Baek and Dark Knight were pushed into their seats by the sudden acceleration.

Chapter 133 [Episode 68] Team Rush 2 – End

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